


Hearts Turn to Dirt

by EarthedLightning



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bisexual John Silver, F/F, Lesbian Sex, Lesbian Thomas Hamilton, Vignettes, it's the whole plot of the show guys, lesbian james flint, mostly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:47:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24261553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthedLightning/pseuds/EarthedLightning
Summary: A woman joins a pirate crew; a captain hunts elusive gold; a princess prepares to wage a war to save her people; not so far away, a woman toils under the Georgia sun.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Madi/John Silver, Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows all four seasons of Black Sails in the form of vignettes/important scenes between Silver, Flint, and Thomas. The entire plot, as well as the vast majority of the dialogue, is lifted directly from the show and is not my own invention. The only major changes are that Silver, Flint, and Thomas are women, and that Silver and Flint will eventually get together in some added/extended scenes. 
> 
> The roman numerals denote different scenes, but are not representative of which episode they come from.
> 
> The title is a line from “We Have It All” by Pim Stones.

I

Just as he closed the door, it burst open again, knocking him to the unsteady floor. He looked up to see someone frantically barricading it.

“What’re you doing?”

The figure half-turned, black hair wild around her face.

“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder.

He scrambled to his feet. “Why aren’t you on deck with the crew?”

“I think the better question is, why aren’t they all down here with us? You could get killed up there.”

She leant against one of the beams on the low ceiling, looking up toward the sounds of the rest of the crew rapidly being made aware of their own mortality.

“Oh, so you’re a coward, then?”

“Yeah,” she said, emphatically. “You too?” She smiled at him, glib and insincere.

“I’m not a coward, I’m a cook. I’ve no quarters to man. What do you think the captain’ll do when he finds out you’ve abandoned yours?”

“Well if he’s dead and I’m alive, I like my chances.” Cannon fire rocked the ship and they both stumbled.

“You know who that is up there? That ship flies the banner of Captain Flint,” he spat.

“Isn’t this your problem too?” she asked, and he wondered briefly why he didn’t recognize her from the mess hall.

“Good cooks are in short supply, even for criminals.” He saw something then, some flicker in her eyes. “But you? Cowering below decks? Dodging a fight? They’ll gut you for sport."

She looked afraid at last now, like the belated shock of impact after the flash of distant guns. 

//

When they broke down the door she was ready, hands in the air, and the cook dead at her feet.

“Hello,” she said to the pistol nearest her eyes, as she stepped over the dead body and into her new lie. “He couldn’t handle the thought of what you might do to him. I, on the other hand, would very much like to join your crew.”

The men holding the pistols looked skeptical, but she smiled.

“My name is Silver,” she said, “and I happen to be a very good cook.”

//

“The most important element of a healthy ship is trust,” Flint said, and Silver (newly self-christened in more ways than one) stepped out of the shadows to watch the captain address her crew.

“Trust between men, trust between captain and crew. Without it, a ship is doomed.” Silver watched Flint's eyes, weary but sharp, as she stared Singleton down.

“For the past few months, you and I have been on the trail of a prize so rich, it could upset the very nature of our world.” She turned, and Silver took in her auburn hair and her coat, far too heavy for the Bahamian heat, as she strode up the ship.

“And for that reason, I felt it necessary to keep it secret. I didn’t trust you, and that was my mistake.” Silver felt her skin prickle as she put the pieces together and saw, abruptly, exactly what Flint was about to say about the stolen goods that she had tucked into her equally stolen coat.

“… but it would appear my concerns about secrecy had merit. Someone on this crew discovered my plans, and tore from this log the very page necessary to discover that prize.” Panic rose in her throat as her suspicions were confirmed, and Silver tried to cast about subtly for an escape as the captain’s accusations continued to fly. But before she could act, before she could even still the tremor in her fingers, the captain had turned her accusations squarely against Singleton. For at least the third time that day, Silver could not believe her luck. 

The fight was loud, and long, and bloody. Silver stood frozen as Singleton carved a deep gash across Flint’s chest, threw her against a cannon, knocked her onto the deck. Flint scrambled back, sword in hand, and Silver braced herself for the final blow. But Singleton’s blow never landed, and the next moment there was a sickening sound as Flint made an informal but thorough introduction of a cannonball to Singleton’s grey matter. Silver felt the horror of it resonate against her ribs, felt her fear grow more acute as Flint pulled what had to be – had to be – a blank page from Singleton’s corpse. But the boatswain went along with the ruse when Flint handed it to him, to Silver’s bewilderment. 

Silver watched Flint stand unsteadily and proclaim that her crew would be the _princes of the New World_ , and mingled with her relief she felt a tug of the maddening, magnetic draw towards the captain that she could see echoed in the faces of the crew. She knew she was in grave danger. She knew she would need to make plans, and soon. But as Flint pushed past her to go belowdecks, her mind was filled only with the glimmer of gold and the shine of blood in the sunlight.

II

She slipped between the rocks, still reciting the lines over in her head to be absolutely certain she had them memorized, and then she was being shoved back against hard stone, her back arching painfully. 

“Where’s the page?”

The captain’s face was barely an inch from hers, her teeth bared. Silver’s feet were struggling to reach the ground and she lifted her hands, afraid she might be struck. 

“You can’t have it,” she said quickly, and Flint pressed a knife against her throat in response.

“Well – not at the moment, and please, we should go.” Vane was still looking for her in the wrecks and the fear of attracting his attention was almost as great as the fear of Flint’s knife, too sharp against her skin.

“Where have you hidden it?” The boatswain was crouched above her on the rocks now and this was the moment where Silver would have to make the stars align. Again. She paused for dramatic effect, breathed, and then, “You’re looking at it.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Flint snarled, rage tearing her words.

“Well,” Silver said, as patiently as she could manage under the less-than-ideal circumstances, “I couldn’t be certain I would escape both the madman and you, so I took drastic measures for the sake of my survival.” Flint was shaking now as Silver tapped her temple. “So the schedule is up here.”

She smiled at the captain, charming veneer masking her fear, but Flint glanced up at a sound back the way Silver had come. She dragged Silver upright, hands still fisted in her shirt and jacket, and pulled her out of sight just as Charles Vane slunk, leonine, into view. They waited in the dark, Flint’s hand on Silver’s mouth and her breath hot on her neck for the long, achingly tense moment before Vane cursed and walked on. 

III

Firelight from the town’s revelries reached across the eddying lake, illuminating a cloaked figure astride a horse. Anxious green eyes gave Nassau one last look before cantering off into the darkness.

Half an hour later, Flint tied her horse at the post and walked, weary and aching, toward the little house. She had to come here, of course she did, but each time it brought the pain back to the surface. She pushed open the door and looked at the severe woman sitting at the pianola. 

She looked so striking, Miranda thought, looking back at James standing in the doorway. Her hair had come undone and it was windswept and wild. But the exhaustion that had haunted her for years was clearer in her features than ever, and as always, it broke Miranda’s heart. She wanted to rush to James's side, to wash the blood from her knuckles and clothes, to hold her. But too much at the wrong moment would be unwelcome, she knew. Reigning in the longing that had rushed into the room with the cold sea air, she pursed her lips. “Take off your boots,” she said gently. “I’ll boil some water.” 

Miranda stepped into the kitchen and Flint’s strength deserted her altogether. She crumpled to the floor, her back against the open door. She stayed there, on the threshold between saltwater breeze and firelight, as the pain in her chest caught up with her. She tried to count how many hours it had been since she had slept, but her mind blurred when she got to forty. The feelings that being back in Miranda’s house had awoken would have to wait, as she could feel oblivion hovering at the edges of her vision long before the water was hot.

//

She woke to bright sunlight, and for a moment the rooster crowing outside and the sight of the chair and washbasin in the corner wove a dewy domestic net around her thoughts. The sweetness of the morning might have overwhelmed her, if it weren’t still overlaid with constant reminders of what they had both lost. She sat up slowly, feeling in agonizing detail the injuries of the past few days.

She padded into the kitchen, her nightshirt far too big and rolled at the sleeves. Miranda was busy at the hearth, so she stepped to the counter and took a ramekin from the shelf. She held it up a little sheepishly to her face, and breathed in the sharp and dusty smell of cinnamon. She thought of porridge at first light, of bread pudding and kedgeree, of what had almost, once, been a home. She glanced up to see Miranda looking at her with undisguised pain. 

“You’re dripping blood across my floor,” she said, and Flint felt a pang at the love in her voice.

James leant gingerly against the kitchen table and Miranda got to work. Having carefully removed James's shirt, she grimaced as she unwrapped the sloppy bandage covering the gash Singleton had left in her skin. She was careful not to look for too long at the dusting of freckles on James’s shoulders and arms, careful to focus only on the mess of dried blood. James grit her teeth as she pulled away the final layer of fabric, and Miranda sighed. 

“You couldn’t have told me about this last night?” She tipped some rum onto a rag and braced one hand against James’s shoulder.

“It’s really not as bad as it l-looks,” James stammered, on the verge of blacking out from the sting as Miranda disinfected the wound. 

For the next few minutes, Miranda filled the silence with talk of the spies Pastor Lambrick had set to watch her, enjoying the deep cadence of James’s replies as she redressed the wound. She took the opportunity to care for her in a way she knew James didn’t have enough of, smoothing her hands across the curve of her belly, the gentle dip of her waist, without ever moving from the task at hand. She pressed the clean bandage gently against James’s breast, felt her slightly laboured breathing. She sensed some of the tension in James’s muscles melting away beneath her hands, and allowed herself to feel, for a moment, glad to have at least this. 

//

Days later, James was back in her arms and, for the first time in months, in her bed. Miranda needed this, and sometimes James did too, but today she was silent and still as Miranda rocked against her fingers. The day was hot, and Miranda kept her eyes shut. She tried, just for a moment, to forget that the last ten years had ever happened, to pull herself back to the very first time she’d had James like this: the nervous glances and the breath that had heated Miranda’s skin, the reddish hair that had been longer then, tangled in Miranda’s hands. The way she’d gasped when Miranda had pushed her against the wall, hands under her shirt, the way she had trembled –

Miranda came, shaking, forcing herself to keep silent. She leant down and laid against James’s chest. James hesitated, hesitated for way too long, but finally brought her arms around Miranda. The two of them lay there for a long time and they didn’t say her name. She was there, she was always, always there, and neither of them said anything at all.

IV

Silver was considering the implications of the butcher’s knife in her hand when Randall dropped the pig in the sand in front of her. She looked at the wet, raw mess in distaste and then smiled up at him.

“You shouldn’t have.”

Silver had never cooked a pig before, of course. She didn’t even eat them if she could help it, and this one was _whole_ and _huge_ and _covered in sand_. Still, she cleaned it up and got the fire going and it started to smell more appealing, and all things considered she was really quite proud of herself. Thief, cook, sailor, pirate: there was nothing she couldn’t do if she really got down to it. Perhaps, once the Urca was captured, the crew of the Walrus would beg her to stay on as their full-time cook and she’d have to graciously decline before retiring with her massive fortune.

Two hours later, she was forced to reconsider this rosy ideal.

“Listen here, you smart-mouthed fuck –”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I said I’ve got the shits! What part of that don’t you understand?”

“What’s going on?” The captain appeared behind Muldoon, squinting in the sun.

“Her rotten pig gave the lot of us the bloody squirts!” 

“It’s possible it wasn’t the pig, you know,” Silver burst in, “I mean, some people have weak constitutions.” She said it in her nicest, sincerest voice, but still raised her knife when Muldoon stepped towards her. 

“Hey! Settle down,” Flint warned. And then, to Silver’s surprise and delight, she picked up a piece of pork and ate it. 

“Mmm. It’s delicious. It’s likely as not it wasn’t the pig; it’s just something that’s going around. Get back to work.” 

Muldoon, fuming, turned away to get back to careening. 

“Thank you,” said Silver, stepping closer to the captain and smiling, “I’m glad someone here likes –” 

But the moment Muldoon was gone, Flint spat into the sand and retched. 

“What the _fuck_ did you do to that?”

“I… cooked it?” 

“You absolutely did not.” And she said it like the poshest Englishwoman Silver had ever heard. 

“The men seemed to think it looked done." 

“Yes, well, they’d eat it raw if left to their own devices.” 

Silver laughed and tilted her head. “That’s awfully cynical,” she said. 

Flint glared at her. This woman would not give her a single inch, would she? After an interminable pause, she sighed. 

“Go get another pig –” she spat into the sand again, “– and do exactly as I say.”

Silver looked at her captain for a moment longer, and then turned back towards Nassau town. If she was going to do this, she would have to get it right.

//

That afternoon, as she watched Billy and Morley have their secret quarrels, she had a new idea. She glanced sidelong at the tent where Flint was charting their course, a compass held delicately in her scarred and rough hands. Her hair was tied neatly to keep it off her neck in the heat, and her rolled shirtsleeves revealed heavily freckled forearms. Silver wondered how far under that shirt the freckles went, and was surprised at herself for thinking it. Holding the concoction Flint had instructed her to make, she gathered her nerve. 

“How exactly does the most feared captain of the high seas learn how to spice and glaze a pig?” 

Flint barely glanced at her. “What do you care?” It wasn’t much, but it was an opening. 

“Well, I don’t, really. It’s just there’s something I think we need to talk about, and I thought a little small talk beforehand might be better than diving right in.” She swallowed. She had heard her accent slip on ‘better’ and she could only hope Flint had not. But Flint only glared blandly at her. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” 

She stepped all the way into the tent then, and said conspiratorially, “What are we going to do about Billy?” 

“Beg your pardon?”

“As much as it pains me to say this, as he has been nothing but warm and welcoming to me, he appears to be… straining at the seams.” 

If she could get Flint to agree with her about Billy and also ingratiate herself, they might really begin to have something here. “I thought maybe we ought to have –” 

“Stop. There is no ‘we’. Billy Bones is a dutiful boatswain who commands enormous respect from his crew as well as from myself. I trust him a thousand times more than I would a rodent like yourself.” 

Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. “Understood,” Silver said, and then, “All that being said, –” 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” 

“I saw Billy speaking with Mr. Morley late last week. At night. In secret.” 

Flint set down her compass and clasped her hands. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” 

“Well, he lied about the page being blank,” said Silver, forcing herself to keep a handle on where this was going under Flint’s piercing gaze. “I believe it’s wearing on him.” 

Flint leant forward. “I've told you once, I won’t tell you again. I trust Billy.” And Silver could _see it_ , right there, the lie in her eyes. She sat down opposite the captain and matched her pose. 

“Trust _me_ ,” she said. “I’m purely in this for myself and you know this. I’ve no reason to tell you anything other than the truth.” (She was proud of that one – that peculiar use of ‘I’ve’ _–_ it was a quirk of the dialect that she had picked up only recently).

She saw Flint smile minutely and lowered her voice: “Both our futures depend on this.” 

Flint’s gaze shuttered and she spat, “I haven’t yet decided whether you even have a future. But I can tell you this: trying to play me against my own crew will not help your cause.” Silver opened her mouth to speak again, but Flint interrupted her, “turn your pig, it’s almost done.” 

So. Not the progress she was looking for, but not nothing either. She stepped back into the sun, but she felt Flint’s eyes on her back as she went.

// 

There was work to do, but every so often Flint found her gaze drawn back up to where Silver was dutifully roasting the second pig. Her hair was tucked behind one ear and she was squinting a little at the smoke. Suddenly, she shifted her stance and lifted her eyes to Flint’s. They were very blue. 

V

Silver opened the door to find a scene she had only half expected. Hands up, she looked at her captain, crumpled on the floor with Gates’s body cradled to her chest, eyes wild and pointing a pistol at Silver’s head. Silver didn’t flinch. She was calm and quiet, making the all-too-familiar shift to a mindset that could handle nearly anything. 

“I’ve come to lend credence to your case that the Urca is still to be won,” she said. 

There was a long, sickening second, and then Flint dropped the pistol, her blank and horrified gaze casting about the cabin for some kind of escape and finding nothing. Silver stepped lightly into the room and locked the door, and then got straight to work, her hands sliding into Gates’s pockets, trying to ignore how warm he still was, trying to block out the way his muscles still twitched. 

“What the _fuck_ are you doing to him?” 

“Making sure there’s nothing incriminating –”

“STOP! Stop.” Flint jerked back, swatting at Silver’s hands. She was reeling, and Silver knew this look, knew how much strength it would take her to keep from losing it altogether. Despair lay thick on her words: “There’s no way out of this.” 

Silver almost smiled, felt something like power in her hands, her shoulders, her bent knees. She felt her life pivot just a few degrees on its axis. She was both choosing and not choosing, both knowing and not knowing what she was doing. “Take it from me,” she said, feeling the echo of meaning in her words, “there’s always a way.”

VI

When the chaos got really bad, when it was all she could do to dodge one explosion after another, Silver felt her mind do something strange. It was as though she had stepped out of herself, as though her own life was no longer in danger. A boy was bleeding out in front of her and she stepped away from the post behind which she had been hiding, knelt, put pressure on his wounds. She could hear herself yelling for a doctor, could feel urgency but only for this boy whose name she did not know. She had never reacted this way before, and she felt dimly that she didn’t know herself. And the blasts kept coming, and there was no doctor to help, and she thought maybe the world would be like this forever. 

And then she happened to glance up, she couldn’t have said why, just in time to see the blast that threw Flint overboard. And then she was running, abandoning the boy who still lay bleeding, who would not survive without her hands to stem the flow of blood. She couldn’t think, she was tripping over her crewmates in her rush to hurtle into the water. 

She didn’t remember diving in, but suddenly the sounds of battle were deadened and she was squinting frantically through the debris, and _there!_ She caught a glimpse of the coat, of her captain’s hair floating around her as she sank, boneless. Silver had never been a great swimmer, but she had always been good under pressure. Unencumbered by a sword or pistol, she pushed herself deeper underwater, consumed by the need see her captain breathing, alive, alive, alive. 

Her hand caught Flint’s sleeve and, increasingly desperate for air, she pulled her towards the surface. Flint was already unconscious by the time Silver surfaced, but she hadn’t yet started inhaling water and after a few seconds above water, having swum far enough away from the ships to be relatively safe and clinging to floating debris, Silver managed to breathe air back into Flint's lungs. She sputtered, and Silver thought she might wake, but in the end she had to drag Flint the rest of the way to shore.

Once there, the need to care for her captain did not abate. She pulled Flint’s wet coat and shirt off, sucking in a breath at the sight of her shoulder. She had no access to… anything, so she bathed the gunshot wound in saltwater once more to clear the sand from it, hoping it would be enough of a treatment for the time being. She cut six inches from the bottom of each leg of her trousers, did her best to squeeze them dry, and then bandaged the entry and exit wounds to the best of her extremely limited ability. The wound was relatively straightforward, and seemed to have missed both bone and tendon. Flint had lost blood, and she would be in considerable pain for the next few weeks, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. 

Her focus was so single-minded that she barely noticed the arrival of other survivors until Dufresne was, again, pointing a pistol at the two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be five parts to this fic: one for each season, and then a self-indulgent, Treasure-Island-do-not-interact epilogue where I will finally stop stealing directly from the show (probably published separately). I have put a degree of effort into historical accuracy in terms of when various words entered English, but I’ve also made absolutely no effort to explain why Flint was allowed into the Navy as a woman. I’m just gay and here to have fun.
> 
> I’m on tumblr @sapphicfarmhand!


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains fairly graphic descriptions of Silver losing her leg, as well as the way she feels about it after the fact. It also describes the rest of the upsetting things that happen in season 2. It's by no means more graphic than the show, but proceed with due caution.

VII

The gold was on the beach. It was within reach, if only they had some way to take it. Unfortunately, Flint’s crew almost universally wanted her dead, she had been shot through the shoulder, and she had absolutely no resources to speak of. It was time, once again, to pull a plan together out of scraps, out of nothing. She was so goddamned angry, and all of the effort that wasn’t going into pain management was going into keeping her voice steady and persuasive.

“The Urca’s gold is secure,” she began, and set to work convincing her shattered crew that their best course of action, regardless of how insane it might sound, would be to let her and one other crewmember swim (fucking _swim,_ this was going to hurt so much) nearly half a mile to take a fucking warship in broad daylight. There were numerous complaints about her recent actions and her overall character that she allowed Dufresne to shout down.

“I would volunteer,” she finished, “in exchange for your pardon. That leaves more of you to go. One volunteer –”

“I’ll do it!”

She turned, incredulous, to glare at Silver. _Silver?_ She could barely swing a sword; she had no idea what she was agreeing to. Flint felt the weight of this new responsibility sink in her like lead.

//  
  


“You shit.”

Silver stopped smiling and followed Flint toward the water’s edge.

“Um, beg pardon?”

“I needed a fighter, someone I could count on to make a difference on that ship. What the fuck were you doing volunteering?”

The venom in her captain’s voice caught Silver off guard. 

“I’m sorry, I’m a little confused. Why wouldn’t I volunteer? If we’re to try and – hang on.” It hit her all at once and she felt sick. Flint couldn’t, she _could_ _not_ be this stupid. With a bullet hole in her shoulder?  


“You’re serious about taking the ship?” The panic rose in Silver’s voice and she cast about for an escape. 

“What the fuck did you think?” Flint snarled. 

“I thought this was how you intended to escape!”

It wasn’t. And soon she was swimming frantically after her captain, her need to stay alive and her newfound but unabating need to keep Flint from harm bound up inside her on the long journey to the ship.

She was still thinking perhaps too-tender thoughts about her captain when they both finally surfaced beside the ship. She wondered how Flint had been able to keep moving. She must have been in so much pain.

“Do as I say when I say, or I’ll kill you myself.”

And then Silver watched, sputtering, as Flint snatched a rope and hauled herself, one-handed, up the hull of the ship.

Silver, who weighed ninety pounds soaking wet and had the advantage of not having been recently shot, climbed up the rope after her, with some difficulty, and pulled herself through a gunport. 

“Well that was easy –” Flint had one hand across her mouth and the other on the back of her neck instantly. She jerked, fighting a flight response. Flint’s face was very close to hers, eyes sparking in the dim light. She waited the long moment for Silver to still and then glanced meaningfully across the galley, gently releasing her. Glancing around, Silver’s heart sank again. The room was full of sleeping Spanish sailors. 

The walk through the galley was agonizing, and she was dead certain they would be caught. And then she saw the boatswain’s whistle, just hanging there, and everything fell into place.

//

Flint turned in time to see her idiot companion reaching precariously over a sleeping sailor, snatching at a trinket. The anger she had been channeling toward her urgent purpose for the past hour bubbled up again. It didn’t abate when the man awoke, or when Flint pushed her dagger into his struggling throat, or when she grabbed Silver by the collar of her sodden shirt and shoved backwards, pressing that same bloody dagger against her windpipe. 

“Wait –” said Silver urgently, panicking anew under Flint’s touch. 

“You almost got us killed,” Flint growled, nose to nose with Silver. 

“Almost. _Almost,”_ Silver raised her hands in surrender, and Flint could see them shaking, could feel Silver’s quick breaths against her cheek. 

“For a fucking _bauble!”_ She held on tighter, trying to keep her anger focused even as she pressed impossibly close to Silver. 

Silver pressed a trembling hand to Flint’s good shoulder and whispered,

“It was the boatswain’s whistle. Look.” She held it in Flint’s line of sight and Flint dragged her attention away from Silver’s face. Very slowly, she pulled the dagger away and uncurled her fingers from Silver’s shirt. But she had pushed Silver against a stack of barrels, so that as Flint released her, Silver had to lean forward into Flint or else lose her balance. Still face to face, too close together, Silver looked into Flint’s eyes. 

“You are truly amazing, you know that? We’re both better off now than we were two minutes ago, yet you’re angry about it because it didn’t happen your way. Might you consider for a fucking moment that your distrust of me is completely unwarranted?” Silver cocked her head, never breaking Flint’s gaze. “When you were sinking to the bottom of the sea, who do you imagine it was who pulled you out and dragged you onto that beach?” 

Flint flinched away from her gaze for a moment. She hadn’t thought it had been Silver. It wasn’t a particularly comforting revelation. 

“Brace yourself,” Silver continued, “but I’m the only person within a hundred miles of here who doesn’t want to see you dead.”

//

All things considered, taking the entire warship with the two of them went relatively well, right up until it didn’t. Getting captured and then escaping was one thing, but as Silver barricaded the door to the cabin, she began to think that the two of them really might die here.

“So what now?” she asked as she loaded her newly acquired pistol.

“They’ll have to converge through that door, roughly a dozen of them, and we’ve three pistols at our disposal.”

“And then what?” 

Flint looked at her, really looked at her, for perhaps the first time in all their shared history. She looked as though she was going to say something – _I’m sorry we have to do this,_ or _you did a good job today_ – but she didn’t. The look hardened, and wordlessly she drew her sword. 

Silver tried hard to swallow her fear, to stand with her captain, pistols raised. Every blast against the door made her whole body revolt against her. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying in vain to draw herself back together, when she felt the side of Flint’s thigh press against her own. She opened her eyes, and Flint was still looking at the door with that horrible singlemindedness. But the warmth of her, the knowledge that she was near, pushed the fear away, just by an inch. It would have to be enough.

But when the door broke down, it was their own crew on the other side, and the relief made Silver’s knees buckle. Flint put a hand under her elbow to steady her and stepped towards her. There was a sudden softness about her, now that the danger had passed, and she smoothed Silver’s hair with her other hand. Silver’s breath caught. There was a ghost of a smile on Flint’s harsh mouth, just for a moment, and then she let Silver go, very gently, picked up her sword and pistol once more, and strode out of the cabin and into the fray.

VIII

_The first time I met you, you were so young, and so bright. I still remember how neat you looked, your lovely blue coat that fitted you so well. I remember what I thought when I turned to look at you – ‘how I wish I could untie that ribbon and see your hair fall about your face’. What must you have thought of me? Pompous, in all my finery._

_Here is what I noticed about you the day we met. When we descended the court steps, you were careful to walk a step below me. It was a courtesy, but it also served to highlight the several inches of height I have over you, and it charmed me. Your posture was ramrod straight – far better than mine. But you’ve always had a poise and strength that I never got the hang of._

_I noticed that your accent occasionally sounded over-formal. I heard you say “undoubtably,” and saw you blush at your mistake. But my dear it could not have mattered less. You know I was smitten with you from the start._

_You bristled when I called you a rising star. But you must see now how I was trying to warn you. Women like me are a risk, and not one I was sure you were willing to take. But you’ve always known your own heart, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at your readiness to join my fool’s errand._

_Once I told you the world I wanted to create, I saw it. I saw you smile. I saw your future link with mine forever. Did you feel it then, too? I think you did._

_The next day, you took me to see a hanging. Not the most romantic encounter, I must admit, but perhaps I ought to think of it as augury, rather, of what has come next. You saw me flinch, must have seen me go pale as the man fell, and you took my arm right away, gallant as ever. You thought you might have been too harsh, scared me off. I may, unlike you, be required to wear skirts in public, but I am not so delicate as you think. Or at least I wasn’t then. Perhaps I am more fragile now. “Civilization needs its monsters,” you said._

“I rather envy you,” said a melodic voice from the carriage behind her. 

She stepped closer to see a beautiful woman smiling at her. Oh, and she _knew_ she was beautiful. Thomas clearly wore her finery out of obligation, and it didn’t suit her. James thought she would look far more comfortable in some trousers, perhaps a loose white shirt, open at the collar… 

But this woman smiled, and it seemed the smile extended all through her, making her dress curve around her just so, making her earrings glimmer. 

“I don’t remember the first time I met her; we were so young. But I wish I did. It’s wonderful to remember meeting those who will be important to you, don’t you think? Particularly when they’re such interesting people.” 

It was a strange thing to say, but she was intrigued. 

“Might I ask, ma’am, how did you meet? You are… relations, are you not?”

There was that smile again. “Not quite. Thomas is a ward of my family’s, and has been since she was seven years old. Oh you needn’t look shocked, Lieutenant, it’s hardly a secret. It’s part of how she’s come so far in politics. She’s very used to arguing with my father to get what she wants. Lieutenant, what is your name? Since you will be working so closely with Thomas, I do think we ought to become better acquainted.” 

“McGraw – James McGraw.” She inclined her head. 

“The task that you and Thomas have set out to do together, though I suspect a grueling one, is one I will always find admirable. I hope to do some of that work with you, in your relentless pursuit of a better world.” 

James found herself smiling back. “I think,” Miranda said, “that with you beside us, we might just be invincible.”

//

_I remember the day you came to our house with a split lip and downcast eyes. You wanted to get straight to work, you wanted to brush past what had happened to you. You were so ashamed. I know you didn’t want to admit you had fought a man for me, and for Miranda. But I also remember when Miranda insisted, in that forthright way of hers, on putting ice against your lip. I remember the way you looked at me while she did it. To this day I am glad it was she who chose to comfort you, and not me. It would have been too much, too soon._

//

The knock at the door came when she was barely decent, her hair still loose about her shoulders and her shirt untucked and uncomfortably see-through. But the landlord for her quarters was strict and she didn’t dare dawdle. Unfortunately, on the other side of the door was not a landlord but a lady. 

“Lady Hamilton,” she said, after an uncomfortably long silence. Miranda was as polished as ever and James felt confidence radiating off of her. James was deeply uncertain of how to feel around her – speaking to Thomas felt much more natural, somehow. 

“I asked the carriage driver for your address.” Miranda looked at her expectantly, but James was still had no idea how to proceed. This was not by any means an expected visit. 

“Lieutenant, it’s rather cold out here,” Miranda persisted. 

“I beg your pardon, please, come in,” said James, remembering herself. She did not want Miranda to come in. Miranda came in. 

“It’s… tidy,” she said of James’s unbearably sparse rooms. Miranda pulled off her lavender silk gloves and smiled. James was hurrying to put on the rest of her clothes. 

“Lady Hamilton, it’s very generous of you to come and visit me. But perhaps I could now escort you back to your carriage?” 

“Are you familiar with Jonathan and Margaret Grey, Lieutenant?” Miranda said, completely ignoring James’s concerns. “They hold one of the largest collections of Egyptian artifacts. I thought perhaps today you’d join me in viewing them, as my guest.” 

“You mean, yours and Thomas’s.” 

“She is otherwise engaged. It would just be… you and me.” 

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” 

“Would you not enjoy my company?” 

“That… would seem to be beside the point. The point is how it would look.” 

Miranda looked politely uncomprehending, though she couldn’t possibly be. James took a breath and continued,

“For me to be seen with Thomas, as the liaison assigned to her by the admiralty, is one thing. But for you to be seen with… a woman like me… it might give rather the wrong impression.” 

“Lieutenant, I am certain you have by now heard what people say about Thomas. We have both heard the rumours and are not bothered by them. We have found, over the years, that there is an inverse relationship between one’s personal happiness and one’s concern for what the neighbours might think.” 

James hesitated, and then put on her coat.

// 

“Where are we going? I’m quite certain this isn’t the way to the Greys’ residence.”

“I quietly instructed the carriage driver to take you home, Lady Hamilton.” 

Miranda smiled at her again, that beautiful, piercing smile. 

“Propriety.” 

“Lady Hamilton, do you know what would happen in my world if people just did as they pleased with no regard for convention?” 

Miranda laughed a little, and it struck James that they had likely overstepped convention by a fair distance already. 

Miranda looked at her so intently that James thought she could see straight through her, and then it wasn’t a choice. It had very little to do with what she wanted, or what had been said. It was a gravitational pull, a spinning closer and closer until James felt herself lean forward and press her lips against Lady Hamilton’s.

_You were there in a heartbeat on that rainy day, worried sick about what I had called you for. I was so nervous about what I would have to do, but as soon as I saw you, in uniform as always, I felt myself calm. I told you my father would soon be arriving, that I was concerned about the part of the plan you and I had yet to discuss. You told me you didn’t think we had such a thing, and I wondered if you knew how much I had never told you._

_I told you how much I trusted you (I still do, I still do), and I asked for your help._

“I want to propose to my father that we don’t hang the pirates. That we pardon them.” 

“I’m sorry, _what was that?”_

“I want to pardon them.” 

“You want to pardon them?” 

“Yes.” 

“How many –” 

“All of them.” 

“… All right.”

// 

Dinner with Lord Alfred Hamilton and his daughter and ward was horrific. Having been raised primarily by a gruff but caring grandfather who minded not what she did as long as the work got done, James had never seen firsthand the way a guardian could make a family’s life into a waking nightmare. After expressing extreme doubt at Thomas’s ability to execute her plan to build a self-sustaining colony, he swung around to the topic that had been awaiting them all for an hour. 

“And what about the pirate raiders of Nassau?” 

James looked at Thomas, afraid and stuck in the simmering tension. But Thomas looked back at her with clear eyes, took a breath, and began. 

“I want to put them to work.” 

“What are you talking about, Thomasine?” 

Another breath. “I intend to secure them pardons.” 

The ensuing explosion was not pleasant to witness, and James wondered about Thomas’s childhood – the ward, perpetually unwanted, out of place and recklessly determined to change the world as a result. She marveled at how much gentleness remained in her, after years of listening to this monster of a man. She felt the familiar rage begin to simmer, and before she knew it she was opening her mouth – 

“I support Thomas’s proposal.” She stood in the ensuing, deafening silence. “I find her argument persuasive. I find her intent to be good and true. And I find yours wanting, _Sir._ I will be relaying my findings to Admiral Hennessey in short order. And now I think it’s time you left, Sir.” 

The silent battle that unfolded then between Lord Alfred and Thomas was too swift for James to parse. It would be years before she understood the full weight of its repercussions. Lord Alfred left without another word.

“Did you just ask my father to leave _his own house?”_

James felt herself blush and looked down at the table. Miranda fidgeted, obviously reeling with the same fear and tension as James. 

But Thomas was having a very different evening from her companions. She slowly pulled off the absurdly formal wig that made her hair look suitably long and ran her hands across her head. She smiled, just a little, and then looked up at James, suddenly serious. 

“Right now, he will be dispatching messages to the Sea Lords, the Southern Secretary, his friends in the Privy Council. He will stop at nothing to ensure that this plan will never see the light of day. And now you’re in the line of fire.” 

James heard the concern in her voice, but couldn’t yet understand it. 

“People can say what they like about you,” she started, the rightness of what she had done coalescing in her after the fact, “but you’re a good person. More people should say that.” She meant what she said, all the way down to her boots. “And someone should be willing to defend it.”

Thomas looked at Miranda, and Miranda at her. It was a confession, they both knew, even if James did not. Miranda gave Thomas the ghost of a smile, and Thomas stood. She stepped toward James, who was still standing awkwardly at her seat – shocked, probably, by her own behaviour, but unwilling to back down from it. 

Slowly, deliberately, Thomas put one hand on James’s shoulder, and the other (carefully, so carefully) she laid against James’s cheek. James flinched, just a little, but her eyes didn’t leave Thomas’s face. And then, despite the tension thrumming so clearly under her skin, James leant forward a fraction, tilted her chin, and Thomas closed the space between them. 

And then her hands were cradling James’s face and James opened her lips just ever so slightly beneath hers, and Thomas felt shaking hands press against her back and she had to resist the urge to sigh. But Miranda was here, _Miranda was still here,_ and her guardian barely out of the door and the rest, she knew, the rest would have to wait.

_Do you still remember?_

_Do you remember, my truest love, how that evening ended? How your fingers brushed mine as we walked down the hall, how you insisted on holding the door for me when we arrived at my rooms?_

_And do you remember what came after?_

_Your wild eyes, your rigid Navy posture as though you were still waiting for my permission to move, to touch. And the thing that first took you apart – I pulled the ribbon from your hair and all at once you became yourself, love rushing right down to your fingertips._

_The way you touched me that night, it was like nothing else. Your capacity for devotion nearly stopped my heart. You weren’t just tender, you were reverent, and love, so was I. It was the first time, I think, that you weren’t at all afraid. And when you’d shaken me apart and held me, I almost couldn’t believe you’d let me do the same for you. My love, you were so beautiful under my hands._

_I remember that night, and all the nights that followed, every day now. I think of your hands, that I thought would be rough but were gentler than silk. Your smell, that I used to catch on my skin hours after you’d left for the day. Maybe most of all I think of the taste of you. Is that vulgar? But I remember – the way your stomach would tense, your hands in my hair, curling in on yourself, trying so hard to be quiet. I miss you, I miss you, every second I miss you._

_What has become of you, my love? Where are you? And what has become of me?_

IX

“Your clock, by the wall,” Miranda said, in Peter Ashe’s opulent dining room, “where did you obtain it?” And that was the way it all turned to cinders.

/

“Told ‘em we ain’t got no real connection to this crew. We help ‘em, we both get safe passage back to Nassau.” 

The silence dragged, and all eyes were on Silver. _And the men whose names are not on that list?_ She had asked. She hated herself, she decided. She really, truly hated herself for this.

“No,” she said, and winced. “I won’t do it.” 

Her first reward for being a decent fucking person was looking directly into Vincent’s eyes as he bled out in front of her.

/

 _Suffering is the soil in which faith grows._ She read the sign and felt it burn her, the screams mixing with Miranda’s rage in her mind as her anger grew and twisted, writhing around the chains at her wrists and throat. The words shuddered through her again and again until they transformed her, until she was not a woman but anger, anger made flesh, flesh made fire. _Before this is over,_ she thought, _you will all see your faith grow._

/

“Alfred came to you, didn’t he? Asked you to betray Thomas in exchange for which he’d see you made a king in the New World?” Miranda almost kept the shaking out of her voice, but James was already struggling to control the tremor in her hands. Ashe’s expression was dark, cornered. 

“Perhaps this is an opportunity for us all to find a little forgiveness,” he said, and Flint felt, rather than saw, the moment when Miranda deliberately disregarded her last ounce of self-control and stood up.

/

Silver was screaming. She had been screaming for a long time now, but sometimes she had to stop when bile rose and blocked her throat. The hammer came down again and again and there was nothing, nothing in the world but the pain. Pain, that is, and the single certainty that she would not send her men to their deaths.

/

The anger was almost enough. It was enough for the shouts of the crowd, it was enough to spit Peter’s words back in his face, enough to see him cowed. But then they opened her coffin, and all the rage in the world wasn’t enough to hide the grief. She cast about desperately for anything to cover her singing, exposed nerves, and there was nothing, nothing, not anywhere.

/

“Thomas died in a cold, dark place! Because of you!”

“I am trying to help you, what more do you want?”

“What more do I want? I want to see this whole goddamn city, this city that you purchased with our misery, burn. I want to see you hanged on the very gallows you’ve used to hang men for crimes far slighter than this. I want to see that noose around your neck and I want to pull the FUCKING LEVER WITH MY OWN TWO HA–” 

Blood hit Flint's face before she even registered the gunshot, before Miranda’s body thudded against the polished oak floor. She heard herself scream, saw her hands close around the man’s neck, felt the futility of her actions and their necessity at once, as though she were watching the scene unfold, as though the only person in the world who loved her was not lying dead on Peter Ashe’s floor, as though anything else still existed at all.

/

“Bring her. Bring her!” 

They set Silver down on the table and gave her some rum while the medic cut open first her boot and then her trouser leg. She couldn’t breathe right and her vision had long since ceased to be coherent. But she still heard it when the room went still. 

“Come on,” she managed, “I’m sure we’ve all seen worse.” The silence only got deeper. 

“I’ll do what I can,” the medic said, and for the first time all day, Silver felt terror – true, real terror that burst like fireworks all the way through her. 

“Would you like me to clear the room?” Muldoon asked as the medic got something unthinkable ready. 

“Why – why would I want you to clear the room?” her breathing was much too fast and her head was swimming from the panic. Muldoon took her hand and the medic explained, “When the shock sets in, you may lose faculties. Some men lose their bowels.” The fear got worse every second. 

“I don’t want this,” she said, utterly desperate now as she had never been while they had tortured her. 

“If it doesn’t come off quickly, you won’t make it three days.” 

“Did you not _fucking_ hear me? I said _I do not want this!”_

The pain before, she learned, had been nothing at all. The pain before had been just an event, just a trauma. Just a very bad day. But this? Everything, forever, would pivot around this pain. Every second of her life would carry its echo from now on, her survival horrifying, her existence just one unending scream.

/

Charlestown was in flames, and Flint was running. Escape meant nothing. Vane was here, he would cover her. She killed anyone who crossed her and she ran directly at Peter Ashe. 

“Wait! James –” Ashe said, and Flint put her sword all the way into his guts and twisted, her hands on his throat as he fell to the ground. She pushed his head to the side and forced him to look at her, still upright in her coffin. 

“Her word will be the last word for this place,” she said. She left him bleeding out in the dirt. She would burn every scrap of this town to ashes and she had no plans to stop there.

X

Silver was aware of having woken up several times, but the memories were tangled and unpleasant to tug at. She could remember screaming, vomiting, cool water against her lips. She could remember a hand on her forehead, a hushed hum through the unending pain. She could remember realizing, over and over, what had happened to her. She would have preferred not to remember anything at all. 

She woke properly at last, though it took the better part of an hour of struggle before her consciousness fully settled into place. She was lying in the window seat daybed in Flint’s cabin, a blanket draped carefully across the lower half of her body. She couldn’t think about that part of her yet. Nauseous and feverish, she hauled herself up onto her elbows and looked around. Sunlight filtered into the cabin, and – oh. Flint was sitting at her desk, book in hand, looking back over one shoulder to meet Silver’s eyes. 

Flint stood, put down her book, and walked with a forced nonchalance to the bed as Silver struggled to sit up further. Silver looked out of the open window at the sea, the breeze welcome against her cheeks. She wondered for a moment if the captain had been sleeping in this cabin as well during her recovery, but pushed the thought away for the time being. 

“Where are we?” she asked. 

“Just south of Inagua,” said Flint, coming to sit in a chair at Silver’s elbow. “Winds blew us east. We stopped off in Tortuga to refit and garner news, of which there was plenty.” _Had she been here the whole time?_ Silver wondered again. _Was she the one taking care of Silver? What had Silver said in her delirious state?_

Flint filled a cup of water for Silver and handed it to her as though she had done it a thousand times. Even through her nauseated haze, Silver found the simple gesture strangely intimate. She was still shaking from exhaustion, and Flint had to hold the cup steady in her trembling hands for several seconds before Silver could take it. 

Flint filled her in on all that had happened as she gratefully drank. Nothing, nothing on earth had ever tasted so good. Flint kept talking, musing to herself about something to do with the state of affairs in Nassau, but Silver was having trouble listening. Pain and panic were all too soon rising within her. She sat up a little further and stared at the blanket covering… covering her. Her hand hesitated above it, gnawing horror threatening to make her vomit up the water again. 

“The men will look to me for support,” Flint was saying steadily, leaning forward in her seat, “but they’ll also look to their new quartermaster.” 

This was enough, at last, to get Silver’s attention. 

“They voted?” she asked. 

“A few days ago.” Flint smiled. “I think the men wanted to tell you when you awoke, so try and act surprised.” Silver had rarely seen such gentleness in Flint’s expression, and it hurt. She couldn’t keep the snarl of panic and self-loathing from her face. 

“Hey,” Flint said softly, and Silver thought she would say more, but instead she simply put a hand on Silver’s where it was balled against the blanket. Silver forced herself to relax it, as though her captain had commanded that she do so. Flint smiled again, that unexpected smile, and her hand closed gently around Silver’s. Silver looked into her eyes, feeling smaller than she had in a long time. She let herself live in that moment for the space of a breath, and then it became too much. 

“There’s something you ought to know before we reach Nassau,” she said, her voice hardening as she watched Flint’s face, “about what we’ll likely face there. The news I relayed to you about the Urca gold having been recovered from the beach was a lie.” She saw Flint’s disbelief flicker in her eyes for just a moment before her face closed.

“I’m sorry,” Flint said tersely, withdrawing her hand from Silver’s and standing up, “I’m having a hard time –” she looked closer at Silver, disappointment and betrayal etching themselves into the lines of her mouth. Silver closed her eyes and looked away as she explained the fabricated story. She wasn’t strong enough for this yet. She should have waited. Flint was fairly twitching with rage when she finished speaking. 

“The informant,” Flint hissed, “he lied to us all? And then he sold the information to another crew so that they could retrieve the gold?” 

“Yes,” Silver said, breathless in the face of her captain’s anger and the fact that her story had worked. 

“Who the fuck did he sell it to?” Their eyes met again, and Silver began to feel the first inklings of her strength returning. Lying was easy. What had happened for a moment when Flint had touched her hand, that weakness, that was a danger that she would have to pay attention to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I promise Flint and Silver will get together in season 3. I appreciate your patience. Speaking of, the third chapter will be up uhhh as soon as I finish getting it into shape! Thank you so much to everyone reading <3


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a fairly gruesome but canon-compliant death (in a tavern, in a head-smashed-in kind of way) as well as descriptions of grief and trauma.

Part 3

XI

The door to the cabin burst open, and Flint slumped in the doorway. Silver sat up, heart suddenly pounding. Her captain was breathing hard, dressed in shadows. She staggered into the room as though dazed and clumsily shut the door. If Flint was aware of Silver’s presence, she made no indication of it. She stood staring at the closed door for a long time, and Silver wondered what had happened on her raid on the town of Savannah. Finally, she got up her nerve to speak.

“Captain?”

Flint started, turned, and her eyes took their time focusing on Silver in the fading light. Silver looked at the blankness on Flint’s face, the horrible distance that had been there most days since they had left Charlestown, since she had lost Mrs. Barlow. Silver suspected that there was more to that story that she did not yet know.

As though she had taken measure of Silver and found her of little interest, Flint turned to her desk and set about removing her dark overclothes, her pistol, her sword belt, all with that same unseeing indifference. She raised a hand to her hair, but stopped when it came away covered in blood. Silver saw it too. It wasn’t Flint’s blood, she didn’t think. But before she could ask, Flint abruptly picked up a knife she kept on her desk, took hold of a lock of her hair and cut it off. She dropped the blood-soaked hair to the floor and took another handful, slicing it roughly.

“Captain,” Silver said, her concern growing, “what are you doing?”

Flint dropped the knife, and Silver could see her hands shaking. Flint sat down, exhausted. “It has to come off,” she said, and her voice sounded as though it had been raked over hot coals. “I can’t have it anymore.”

Silver considered Flint’s words with a sense of pained familiarity. There were moments, she knew, when a body was too much to bear, and had to be burnt up and reborn. If cutting Flint’s hair might ease some of whatever was going on in her mind, well. Silver was already deeply indebted to every member of this crew in a way that made her faintly nauseous to think about, so she might as well start repaying debts now. She had made a few brief turns about the cabin in the last few days, leaning heavily on a crutch, but it hurt more than she had let on, even to Flint. Still, she lifted herself slowly from the window seat, took her crutch, and stood. Her ruined leg swung uselessly, and the blood that rushed into it made her breath come out in a huff.

She crossed the room and with her free hand picked up Flint’s fortunately full washbasin. She always made sure it was ready before she went on a raid, that she might wash upon her return. Silver spilled a good portion of the water on her way back to the desk, but there would be enough. Flint hadn’t moved, but Silver saw the streaks of silent tears on her cheeks. She said nothing; just put down the basin, dipped her hand and the knife into the water, and got to work.

She smoothed her fingers over Flint’s head, wetting her hair. She ignored the blood that slicked her fingers. And then, keeping the crutch under her shoulder, she took hold of a lock of hair and sawed it gently off, keeping her blade close to Flint’s scalp. Then she took another, working her way carefully around Flint’s head, folding her ear to get at the wispy strands. Under other circumstances, she thought, this act might have been singing with tension: to be holding a knife so close to Flint’s skin, to have Flint trust her with so intimate a task. As it was, the light was dim, and Flint was unresponsive as stone, and Silver’s leg hurt constantly. But she tried, she really tried to imbue her actions with the same gentleness with which Flint had treated her in the days following her injury.

The last of Flint’s hair fell softly to the floor, and Silver belatedly thought to mourn it. She brushed her fingers over the somewhat uneven close-cropped hair and heard Flint take a slow breath.

“You’re free,” Silver said softly, her hand stilling at the nape of Flint’s neck. Flint turned to look at her at last, and Silver considered how close to her captain she was standing. Flint’s gaze felt more real at last, and the effect of her already striking features without her hair to soften them took Silver by surprise. For a long moment they stayed as they were in the dying light.

“Thank you,” Flint said at last. Her voice had lost its edges, and for a second, Silver wished whatever effect cutting her hair had had would be permanent, leaving Flint soft and open like this, a Flint that Silver could touch.

The moment stretched, and then snapped when the two of them heard a muffled shout from the men. Silver started, pulled her hand back. She looked back at Flint, only to see her moving, beginning to gather up the bloody locks of her hair from the floor. She did not look at Silver again, and everything in her telegraphed Silver’s dismissal. Part of Silver wanted to be indignant about that, to ask her captain just what her place was in all of this, but she was already in so much pain. She had overexerted herself, and her body would make her pay for it.

She turned, suddenly weary, and made her way back to the window seat. She didn’t notice when Flint stopped what she was doing and watched her, didn’t see how Flint readied herself to help if Silver’s laboured steps should falter.

XII

On the twelfth day in the doldrums, Flint cut the rations again. The plans made between the captain, quartermaster, and boatswain were grim. Silver stopped speaking to Flint, stopped accepting most of her rations, and lived off the fire of her anger at the position her crew was in.

She thought of Muldoon every day, letting the thought of his hand going limp in hers twist inside her. She woke a dozen times a night from dreams where she pushed her own head under the water, found his lips and tried to breathe life into him again. Or else dreams where she was lying on that table again, and he was there, holding her hand until she awoke screaming.

On the eighteenth day, Silver made eel stew for the seventh time. Before she finished it, the captain shot two men point blank for stealing a mouthful of rations. She could have spoken up, might have tried to stop it, but she didn’t. Gates had managed to sway Flint’s mind more than once. So had Mrs. Barlow. If Silver didn’t find a way to reach her soon, more men would die.

She heard Flint’s sobs on the other side of the cabin door after they threw the bodies overboard, but she didn’t knock. Despite the violence, despite the terror and the dehydration, the weakness she felt for her captain had not dissipated. She felt it all of the time now, and sometimes she hated herself for it.

On the twenty-first day, Death stalked the quarter deck. Silver could not bear to look at the crew, so she looked at the water. She wasn’t the first to spot the whale carcass, but her stomach still flipped at the sight of it. De Groot insisted it was rotten, but Silver had the launch readied all the same.

“I’m gonna see it myself,” she said. “There’s too much at stake.”

“You’re gonna row out there on your own?” The captain’s voice said behind her. 

“I’m one of two members of this crew who’s been on full rations for the past few days,” Silver replied. “You’re the other. Let’s go.”

//

“I stole it from you,” Silver ground out as they approached the carcass. 

“What?” 

“The Urca gold.” It was a long shot. Flint might well kill her for this. 

The captain stilled.

“You were deceived,” Silver continued. “I built the lie, enlisted the scouts, arranged the sale of the information to Captain Rackham. I conceived it all. You say this crew is too weak to keep up with you,” she said, as Flint stared blankly at the endless, flat ocean. “Some of them may be weaker than you. Some of them may be less smart,” she leant forward. “But don’t you for a second think I fit that description. Whatever happens out here, one thing is certain: you will account for me.” 

Flint turned to her then, eyes blazing, but there was a curiosity to her gaze as well, as though she was seeing Silver anew. Silver’s words hung in the shimmering air between them for a long moment. 

“Why are you telling me all this?” Flint finally asked. 

“So you can decide whether you want to kill me –” she pushed down the tremor in her voice, “or acknowledge the fact that you and I would be far better off as partners than as rivals.” 

Slowly, Flint turned away from Silver again. She picked up her oars and continued the slow slog towards the carcass. Silver couldn’t be certain, but she thought there was a shift in the way they rowed together, a subtle synchronicity to their movements that had not been there before. 

It was probably that newfound understanding, Silver reflected later, that allowed them to catch the shark.

//

The crew ate well that evening. There was fresh meat for everyone, and enough water to stave off the worst of the dehydration. They would make it to their next landfall, even if the wind took another week to pick back up. 

There was singing that night, from those men who found the strength for it. As the stars began to appear, Silver made her way carefully, painfully, down the stairs. Her belly full, the tension she had been carrying for weeks had left her all at once, and she felt boneless. Her breaths filled her lungs all the way once more. Tomorrow, perhaps, the grief would return. But tonight, the ocean felt kind and the air was cool.

Later, she could not have said what led her to the captain’s cabin, only that she was elated and wanted to see Flint smile again, as she had when the shark had finally died in their rowboat. She did not knock. 

Flint was pacing before Silver entered. She had felt unsettled since their conversation on the boat, unsure of where to go next. She had been adrift ever since Miranda, ever since Charlestown. But something about Silver’s words today had brought her back to a shore she had almost forgotten. _You will account for me._ She had felt herself reaching for something she could not quite touch when the door opened. 

There was Silver, red-cheeked in the moonlight, hair slipping out of its knot. Her eyes were shining, and Silver smiled at her like she had not smiled since before Muldoon’s death, before her leg, before everything had grown so twisted and stark. She seemed almost drunk with happiness, and it hurt to look at. 

“You left early,” Silver said, one hand keeping her steady in the doorway. “Did you eat enough?” 

“I did, thank you,” said Flint, off her guard, half-turned where she had been when Silver had opened the door. Silver was invading her privacy, she knew, but she could not bring herself to care. It was not so long ago that they had shared this cabin during Silver’s convalescence, before she had insisted on wearing the boot and becoming one with the crew again. Silver started to say something else, but as she stepped into the cabin, the Walrus lurched slightly, and she lost her balance. Flint stepped forward to steady her, catching her about the waist as Silver winced, hands gripping Flint’s shoulders.

Silver shut her eyes as she reigned in the pain, and as she came back to herself she realized that Flint had not let her go. When she looked at her captain, the raw concern in Flint’s eyes surprised her. She could not bear her crew’s pity, and made certain she always looked strong when they could see her. But this was different. This was Flint, who had already cared for her through the worst days of her life, whose hair she had cut, who six hours ago had killed a shark with her. Flint’s concern did not make her feel pitied.

In Silver’s mind, it was suddenly very simple. _We would be far better off as partners,_ she had said, and it was true. Flint was steady in all the ways she was not, and she could see her captain’s mistakes before they destroyed her crew. She slid a hand along from Flint’s shoulder to the side of her neck, some kind of maddening certainty driving her actions, and leant up to kiss her, gently. 

For a moment, Flint went still, nearly pulled back, and Silver’s heart jumped at the possibility that she might have made a mistake. But then strong arms pulled her tighter and Flint’s hand came to rest in her unruly hair. Their kisses deepened, growing more urgent. Silver’s heart was hammering as she wondered where this would take them. It had been a very long time since Silver had been kissed, and she didn’t want to stop now.

XIII

The princess watched the ragged crew line up, watched her mother scrutinize them. But more than the captain who stood rigid beside her men, Madi was interested in the quartermaster. She was small but solid, standing with pain evident in her muscles. Madi looked down and noted the metal boot with interest. The quartermaster looked almost on the brink of collapse, but she held the queen’s gaze steadily, gave her word that no other pirates knew where the shipwrecked crew had ended up. The captain and the quartermaster, the only two women on the crew. They were compelling. She had to remind herself that they were prisoners. 

She saw the quartermaster again later, as she walked home. She was standing at the bars of her crew’s prison and their eyes met. Madi held her gaze longer than necessary, perhaps, and then let her eyes drift imperiously away. She wondered if they would get the chance to speak, or whether this woman would die with her men. She had no reason to hope for the quartermaster’s survival, and she knew she ought not to, but she found herself considering the possibility nonetheless. 

That night, Madi summoned her. She waited, making sure her face showed nothing but calm certainty, until she heard uneven footsteps behind her. She sent her men away, hoping against hope that their loyalty would hold, that none of them would think to tell her mother of this unorthodox visit. 

Madi stood and turned, catching the woman in her gaze again. 

“Do you know who I am?” 

“You’re her daughter,” she said evenly. 

Suddenly forgetting quite what she had planned to say, Madi asked about the shipwreck and the information gleaned from the first of the interrogations. She asked why the crew would have refused pardons, but mostly she was watching how this strange new arrival spoke. Her speech was careful, hedging, seeming to gain confidence and momentum as the story unfolded. It sounded like a lie, and she called the quartermaster’s bluff. 

“Our people have suffered cruelties you cannot possibly imagine. No one has greater cause to swear England an enemy as we do. Yet I believe, if we were offered a chance to be free in the eyes of the law, it would not have been so roundly rejected. I’m asking you why you think that is.” 

Her guest let out a shaky breath. “I’m very aware my men’s lives hang in the balance,” she said, “so I can give you the answer you’re looking for, but I don’t think you’re gonna want to hear it.” 

“Answer the question,” Madi said. She had taken a risk in bringing the quartermaster here, and she did not want to leave this encounter with nothing to show for it. 

The woman looked at her, clearly unsure. Finally, she spoke, her voice slow.

“Your men are filled with anger toward England, as are mine. But my captain wanted England to see that anger, and make them fear it. For whatever reason, your mother would prefer your men fear England.” 

Madi nodded, slowly. The words would take some consideration. 

“Take her back now, please.” 

“Wait, wait a minute!” the quartermaster pleaded. “You asked the question and I answered it. I have two dozen men in a cage out there of the opinion that your mother intends to kill us all. Will you do nothing about it?” 

Madi looked impassively into her pleading eyes for a moment longer, and then jerked her head. Her men dragged the woman from her quarters once more. Madi had spent her life training herself not to show outward signs of confusion or uncertainty, but tonight it was hard. She did not know what to do.

//

Silver found Flint leaning with her elbows against the bars when she returned, her cropped hair grey in the moonlight. She wasn’t coping with recent events, and Silver was yet to fully understand why. She put a hand on Flint’s waist and stepped close. 

“Where are you?” she asked softly. Flint sighed and leant slightly into Silver’s touch. 

“The universal pardons,” she said, her voice heavy, “I helped build them. Peter Ashe, Miranda, her – sister – and I, we worked to eliminate piracy and restore colonial rule in Nassau.” She was quiet again, and her fingers found Silver’s on the rough bars of the cage. “I moved away from those things, inch by inch. I forgot it all. Isn’t the civilization of Nassau the same thing that I tried to achieve all those years ago?” 

Silver tried to reach through the words, to find what it was that Flint wasn’t saying. This wasn’t just about Nassau’s politics. It couldn’t be. But something was holding Flint fast and would not let her go. 

“Perhaps,” Flint said, “it is time to accept the inevitable.” 

“No,” Silver said. “Nothing is inevitable here.”

XIV

Silver was sweating through a high fever and losing her mind with panic. Flint was gone, with no guarantee she would make it back alive, and if Silver didn’t get this pain under control, she would soon lose the strength her men relied on. But there was nobody here, nobody who could help her, and who knew how many minutes were left before the drumming that kept everyone’s attention on Mr. Scott would finish. She had always done everything on her own, but she had also always been alone. The stakes now were too high. She fought for breath. 

“For you to be seen as uninterested in what is happening with my father now, that is not going to help convince anyone here that you are serious about desiring our friendship.” 

Sweat dripped from Silver’s brow as she turned, shaking, to face Madi. She watched her face turn from annoyance to shock at the sight of Silver’s blistered leg. Through the fever, she felt welling shame at being seen like this, and by someone so poised, so prepared for everything that was thrown at her. 

“It’ll pass,” Silver croaked. “I’m fine.”

Madi stared at her, and Silver averted her gaze. She didn’t know how to be diplomatic right now. 

The princess summoned a guard. 

“Watch her, please,” she said. “I’ll get Fremah to tend to her.” 

“I said no!” Silver said, her voice frayed. 

“I know you did.” There was concern in her eyes, and a softness that made her think, somehow, of Flint. Silver gripped Madi’s arm as she began to walk away. 

“I don’t want help.” 

This turned out to be a mistake, as the guard had a blade drawn in an instant. Silver let her go, trembling hands raised. Madi nodded, and the blade was stowed once again. 

“It’ll pass,” Silver repeated. “I’ll just find a place to weather it for the night.” 

“I understand that you do not want anyone to see you this way. What I don’t understand is why you choose to suffer in the first place.” Ignoring her guard, Madi knelt to get level with Silver and looked into her eyes. “We have better medicines –” 

“I cannot look weak.” A tiny frown creased Madi’s face, and Silver continued, “I cannot feel weak. I cannot _be_ weak. Not in front of my men, not in front of your men, _not at all._ I cannot look the part of a leader while being poked and prodded, or drooling through an opium haze saying who the fuck knows what.” Her voice was ragged with fear, and she wished she had managed to keep this from Madi as well as from her men. 

But Madi did not look disgusted with her. She stood, and said gently, “no one prepared you for this, did they?” Silver looked up as she continued. “You’re frustrated. You’re angry. You’re tired. Perhaps no one else really knows why. Perhaps not even you know why. But I know why. 

“The crown is always a burden. But it cannot be borne if you cannot stand.” 

They looked at each other, and Silver wondered whether her life was ever going to stop spinning so quickly and strangely out of her control.

// 

“If you won’t take the opium, at least take this to bite down on.”

Silver looked from Madi, to Fremah’s grim-looking poultice paste, to the proffered piece of wood. 

“Just do it,” she said. 

The pain was bad, but she’d felt worse. Okay, it was very bad. She held her breath to keep from crying out, but her eyes still filled with tears and her head swam. She reached out and gripped the wooden post beside her that held up the thatched roof. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block everything out. And then a hand, strong and cool and sure, came to hold her own, pressing Silver’s palm into the wood. Madi held her until Fremah had finished her work, strong, solid, and unmoving. Silver felt herself, against everything she had trained herself to be, leaning into that strength, allowing Madi to hold the pain with her until, slowly, it abated.

//

Madi watched over Silver as she slept the afternoon away, her heart aching for this woman who would not let herself heal. She was lost in thought until she heard her voice, finally calmer after the tension that had shaken in it earlier. 

“The burden that I wasn’t prepared for,” Silver said into the silence, “it wasn’t the men. It was her.” 

“Flint?” 

“What she wants, what she needs, what she fears. Those depths are profound and dark. I’ve descended into them and connected with her so that I might steer her where she’s needed. But I’m not the first to have been a partner to her in this way. The ones who have seen those depths before… they never surfaced again.” 

“Maybe their mistake was trying to do it alone,” Madi said. “Maybe, to go to such a place, one needs another to hold the tether and to find a way out.” 

Silver had expected her words to push Madi away, to make her see what kind captain Silver served. But instead she felt as though something new was sliding into place, something that might keep them all strong enough to get through the coming war.

XV

The tavern was quiet in the new Nassau. Men who had once brawled sipped rum demurely, the transformation so complete and so swift that she was glad Flint couldn’t see it. The sound of her boot on the wooden floor echoed, and it reminded her with every step what kind of monster she now was. But tonight, that sound had a purpose. She stepped into her role like slipping underwater, felt her words take shape in the air around her, felt the curious and half-fearful eyes on her. Afterward, she could not have told anyone quite what she had said – the story flowed through and out of her, and once it was gone there was no getting it back. 

“Is that it?” A familiar voice intoned, and Silver stopped. “Surely, there must be more. Surely if Captain Flint were truly alive, she can do better than to send a handful of men, led by half a woman, in the dead of night to deliver a threat as weak as this.” 

She watched him approach, fury pressing against her ribs and under her skin. And then, just in time, she remembered herself, and saw the opportunity Dufresne, stupid, cowardly Dufresne, was unwittingly offering her. She shifted her stance subtly and directed her rage with care, pinpointing exactly what she would need to do next. 

“Even whole,” Dufresne said, “you were unworthy of half the attention we paid you.” 

She swung a tankard at Dufresne’s head and he crumpled to the floor, dazed but not unconscious. She did not tremble as she contemplated him, this cockroach who had blundered into giving her the last piece of the puzzle. She steeled herself, pulled on the endless well of anger she now carried within her heart, perhaps had always carried but had not been able to access so readily. She drew it into herself until it was all she could see, all she knew. And then she lifted her steel boot and brought it down, hard, onto Dufresne’s bruised face. She felt his skull crunch with a sick, wet sound, and she knew he was dead or about to be. But she lifted her boot and brought it down again, again, again, so that Dufresne’s blood flecked her face and his brain was worked thoroughly into the floorboards.

“Tomorrow you will join us,” she said into the nauseated silence that followed. “Or you will all be looking over your shoulders the rest of your lives.”

If the tavern had been quiet before, it was nothing to the silence that now reigned. Her world had narrowed to a sharp point, a singing singularity. She handed the book of names to Billy and walked out of the tavern. She felt as though she was breathing fire.

// 

Silver sat on the medic’s table, her ruined leg stretched out in front of her. The world was shivering painfully back into focus, pain pulling her back to a reality in which she had committed a brutal murder in front of witnesses, killed a man who was once part of the rhythm of her days. She lived again in a world where a war was imminent, where for the first time in her life she was tied to people that she wanted to save, that she would do terrible things to save. She felt cold, she was free-falling, she needed to sleep, she needed to run, and she would never be able to run again. 

“Are you all right?” Flint’s voice said behind her. 

“I didn’t feel it when I struck down on him. I didn’t feel it when we made our escape.” She let out a shaking breath. “I feel it now.”

“I wasn’t talking about the leg,” Flint said. 

_Neither was I,_ she thought distantly. 

“There is an element of this journey into the dark that I’m only now beginning to appreciate,” Silver said, everything that had happened still roiling inside her.

“What’s that?” Flint asked.

Silver looked her captain in the eye and knew Flint could see the fear and weakness in her, but something else as well. “How good it feels,” she said.

She realized it was true as she said it. No matter what might be catching up with her now, she could remember what she had felt as she had destroyed Dufresne. She could remember the certainty of it, the clarity of purpose. Did Flint feel like this when she did violence against those who opposed her? Was this the feeling she had chased in her grief after Miranda’s death? And now that she had felt it, what kind of danger was she in? What would it take before she was willing to do it again?

XVI

The treasure was buried and the captain and her quartermaster sat by the fire on the eve of war. They had hurtled so close to one another, back in Flint’s cabin in the doldrums, that she wondered if they had already begun to fly apart, their asymptotic lives destined to remain ununited. Silver didn’t want this war, Flint knew, and eventually Silver would come to understand her own strength. She would eclipse Flint, and soon. Perhaps it was already too late. 

But Silver had other ideas. If there was to be a war, then first they would reach an understanding. Turbulent as the last few weeks had been, she felt herself orbiting Flint ever closer. She took a deep breath and decided to find out how they might collide. She moved a little closer to Flint and stared into the flames before them, letting her knee brush Flint’s thigh. 

“Many of your demons I’ve come to know,” she said into the crackling night. “But the one in whose name this war is to be fought is still a stranger to me.” Flint did not look at her, but bowed her head. “Before this war actually begins,” Silver continued gently, “I’m asking you where it really began. Will you tell me?” 

Flint looked at her then with a terrible grief in her eyes, and told her about Thomas Hamilton.

//

“Madness is such a hard thing to define, which makes it an easy label to affix to one’s enemies. Once it had been applied to Thomas, once our relationship had been… exposed, defiled, scandalized… everything ended. That was the day that on some level I knew that England was broken, and that sooner or later all good people must resist it.”

Blood was rushing in Silver’s ears. That Flint could have done all this, caused all this death, over a lost love – it was unimaginable, and yet it fit into who she knew Flint to be that she could not doubt that it was true. Her captain was finally becoming clearer in her mind.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to say anything. You asked me where it began, and I thought that you were entitled to an answer. To the truth.” 

“I appreciate that. And I am genuinely sorry.” It occurred to Silver then that she, like Thomas and Mrs. Barlow had been, might now be closer to James Flint than anyone else in the world. She wondered if her fate would be as tragic as theirs, but as she considered it further, she wondered if instead it might be her that brought about Flint’s end, and not the other way around. She allowed her mind to fly forward, through the war, through the decisions they all would have to make. But when her future got too uncertain, she drew back to the present. Here, they could both live. It might be their last chance.

Silver put her hand on Flint’s but did not look up from the fire. Wordlessly, Flint turned her hand over so that her palm pressed against Silver’s. Silver breathed once, in and out, not quite steady, and turned to her captain. 

They kissed and Flint’s lips were far more sure now than they had been before. At the touch of her captain’s tongue Silver nearly felt herself come undone, but then she pressed closer against Flint and smoothed her fingers over the shorn hair at the back of Flint’s neck. There was an equilibrium to their movements, a shared surety as a whole world opened up between them. Silver ran a hand carefully up Flint’s back, under her shirt, and felt Flint bite her lip when she dug her nails in. 

A nighttime forest on a wild island was not an ideal place for a tryst, Silver reflected, but beggars can’t be choosers. She brought her hand from Flint’s neck down, slowly, to her waist, and let her fingers rest on the buttons of her trousers. She pulled back a moment and looked her captain in the eye, asking permission. Flint’s expression was dark with want, her lips wet and slightly open. She nodded, just slightly, her eyes open and honest and certain. Silver’s heart pounded.

As Silver’s fingers undid the buttons, Flint twined hands in her hair and dragged Silver back to kiss her again. She felt Flint shift her legs further apart as Silver’s fingertips brushed the tangle of her hair. Flint’s hands tightened, one against Silver’s scalp and the other on her shoulder. As Silver’s fingers found the right spot, Flint broke their kiss and buried her face in Silver’s neck. Flint rocked against her, biting down where her neck met her shoulder to keep herself quiet, though there was nobody anywhere for miles around. 

Silver felt her own body tense in anticipation as Flint got closer, hardly daring to breathe. Her hand was flat against Flint’s back and she felt her begin to shudder. Flint, on the ragged edge of pleasure, pressed desperate, heated lips to Silver’s again. She came, silent and shaking, with Silver’s hand cradling her head. 

Moments passed where all Silver could hear was the snap of the logs in the fire and their twinned panting. Flint’s forehead leant against Silver’s and her eyes were closed. In the firelight, Silver could just make out the flush that crept up her neck from below her shirt. There was so much more that she longed to do, to touch. But then the moment passed, and Silver felt her captain’s gaze on her again, this time with intent. 

Flint raised a hand, carefully, to Silver’s cheek, and kissed her. It was soft, slow, almost comforting, but it held an edge of desire. It felt as though Flint was holding herself back, the tension beginning to build between them again. Silver’s stomach flipped as she realized her captain really was about to touch her. The thought overwhelmed her. 

And then Flint got to her knees. 

Silver’s mouth fell open and her breath left her lungs. Flint looked up at her from her position between Silver’s legs, and Silver leant forward, put her trembling hand under Flint’s chin, and kissed her. She felt Flint sigh under the slow press of her tongue. 

Then there was an awkward moment that nearly spoilt it, when Flint had to help Silver pull her trousers down to her knees without putting weight on her still-healing injury. Silver almost pulled away, but Flint was there, kneeling up to hold her and kiss her again, hands on her skin until she was shaking. Too soon, Flint was leant over her, pushing her down gently, until Silver was propping herself up by her elbows against the stone she was sitting on. Flint looked at her once more, and then lowered her head. 

It was almost too much. The muscles in Silver’s stomach jumped and she made a sound that Flint seemed to enjoy. She felt Flint’s laugh resonate through her body and she pressed forward. Flint’s hands against her hip and her side kept her still enough, and her sharp breaths began to quicken. She tipped her head back, and as the afterlight of the fire left her eyes, she saw the stars glimmering through the trees. She had never seen them so bright, had never seen the world lit up so exquisitely before. And then she felt it begin, felt the muscles tense in her belly, her thighs, heard herself cry out, her back arching up as Flint finally, gently, slowed.

They slept by the dying fire that night, curling toward each other. Their hands were still clasped, keeping each other from drifting in the dark of the night, under the stars, on the eve of the war that would end everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized recently how close together Charlestown and Savannah are, and that it would be plausible that Flint could have conducted or at least attempted a raid there, or stopped there on a supply run at some point, and just never made it far enough inland to see any plantations. This knowledge haunts me so now I gift it to you.
> 
> Thank you to everyone keeping up with this! I appreciate you so much <3


	4. Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty heavily cribbed from S4 but in case you've forgotten or you're reading this without watching the show (you wild son of a gun), warnings for big sadness and grief, and not very happy endings for some people

XVII

Three hours after the wreck, Flint and Madi stood side by side and watched the dinghy row slowly to shore.

“That’s the last one,” Flint told her. “According to the men who just landed, that is the last longboat.”

“I heard the same,” said Madi, her eyes never leaving the boat.

“I’m told they saw someone injured pulled aboard from out of the water – almost drowned.” She looked at Madi, at the pain and hope in every line of her body. She wished there was something she could do, some kindness she could offer Silver’s lover, her real lover, the one that she deserved.

“Here I must be careful,” Flint said. “I have well over two hundred men unaccounted for. For those that remain, it would be very hard to explain to them why, with all I have to tend to, I choose to stand here, hanging on to the fate of just one of them.” Madi still did not look at her, and she continued, forcing down the emotion that threatened to well up in her voice, “I know that you and she had been working closely together, of late. Become… friends.” She could not say it, could not bring it into the light. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” 

I know how you feel. I know what it is to love her. I wish we could wait for her together, with nothing between us but the love.

“Perhaps just that… she is my friend too,” she finished hollowly.  
The men in the longboat pulled the injured sailor onto the sand. It was not Silver. Flint shut out the emotional toll of what she knew Silver’s absence meant, simply refused to go through the journey of loss and jumped instead to its end: Silver was gone, she always would be, and there was work to do. Madi, she saw, for all her outward composure, was reeling. There wasn’t time to comfort her, and Flint didn’t think she had any comfort in her anyway. She turned and walked back up the beach.

XVIII

Silver was gone, Silver was dead, so there was nothing except the fight. Flint and Madi together would retake Nassau with a ragtag army of whatever pirates and slaves remained. They would build a new world where England and Empire were no longer inevitable; they would spark a revolution across the whole of the New World, or else (more likely by far) they would die trying. Flint could tell by the way Madi looked at her, the way she walked, the way she could justify putting her people in such extreme danger that the two of them were prepared for the same brutal duality of possible outcomes. They had grown closer in the last few days, building a manic solidarity instead of allowing themselves to process their grief. Too much sanity may be madness, Madi said to her before she left, dressed as a commoner and ready to walk into the heart of Nassau alone. If this was all that was left, all that would ever be left, then the two of them would beat at the limitless fire of Empire until it finally consumed them, and then, maybe, finally, she would be able to rest.

//

Silver heard the dogs barking just before Israel’s head snapped up. But the two of them were quick, and before the men sent out to find her could reach their camp, they were already on the ground behind the beach scrub. It had been a while since Silver had been operating with so little concept of a future, and she was not enjoying the experience. She had been stupid to grow so used to the comfort of her connections with Madi and Flint, and now she might be about to pay for it.

And then she heard the familiar click of pistols cocking behind them, which really did not improve her emotional state. Israel’s gun was trained on them before any shots were fired, but they were clearly outnumbered. She was thinking fast, her brain reaching for the words that would stymie bullets, but then –

Flint dispatched the soldier with more satisfaction than was strictly necessary and looked up to see Silver, her beautiful, reckless Silver, alive, breathing, alive. Madi had made it back to camp so out of breath and emotional that for several minutes nobody had been able to understand her. Finally, she had shared the news, the best possible news, that Silver had not died – but might soon if Flint and her men were not quick to find her. Madi had hugged her then, the two of them shaking, tears flowing freely down Madi’s usually calm face. I’ll find her, Flint had promised. I’ll bring her back to you.

Silver stood, her metal leg now absent in a way that reshaped her presence. She came toward Flint with a crutch under one arm. Her cadence was different, Flint thought. There was something bold about her now. Silver stopped a single pace from Flint and smiled at her.

“I thought you were dead,” Flint said in an undertone.

“Does Madi know that I’m alive?”

“Yes,” Flint said, holding her pain just under her skin. She turned to go. “I’ll take you to her.”

“Captain,” Silver said, and Flint stopped. Silver took her hand, her fingers gentle. They looked at each other for a moment, and Flint finally allowed herself to feel a hint of the relief and joy of knowing that Silver was alive, and smiling, with eyes full of something almost like love. Flint began the long walk back to camp, and neither one of them chose to let go.

//

Flint saw Silver’s face change when she saw Madi, saw the princess turn around and see her lost lover. She stayed where she was as Silver and Madi closed the distance between them, as Madi took Silver’s face in her hands and kissed her. She watched as they allowed themselves to feel what she and Silver had, for their own myriad reasons, forced themselves to repress, as though holding Silver’s hand were an adequate substitute for embracing her. Such a reunion Silver and Madi had, as Flint knew they deserved – she tried again and again to push away her envy. There was no such reunion to be had for her. The three of them were here now, and there was work to do. If she wanted grief, if she wanted memory and love and fruitless wishing, well, the time had passed. She was carving herself down to the bone for this war and nothing else would ever matter, not ever again.

XIX

Silver had been so certain of it all. In those shining few days as Pirate King, the whole world had bent to her will. Her word, Flint’s word, they had been in perfect harmony, guiding the future to what they both wanted it to be.

But then Madi died. Madi burned to death in that house with nobody beside her and now Silver would be spectral with grief forever. And now the future was cracked, was ground into dust before her. There was no peace to be had here. There was no love, no home, no end. There was just the blood, and the slaughter, and the loss, extending endlessly into the future. Flint was talking about sacking Boston, now. The world filled higher and higher with hot blood and she felt herself beginning to drown.

Perhaps Flint was right. Perhaps the only way out was through, to slice and gut and burn their way to whatever world was on the other side. If they could take Madi, as they had taken Thomas and Miranda Hamilton from Flint, maybe burning civilization to the ground was the only kind of justice she would ever get. She didn’t know if she really believed that was true, but she was trying to. She was really, really trying to keep the anger alive, because she could see nothing else that would keep her from simply sitting down on the dusty earth and doing nothing at all as it all burned around her.

If there was no war now, then Madi’s death would serve no higher cause. If Madi died for nothing, if the world went back to the way things were, if she lost the only love, the only hope she had and could ever remember having, if all of that disappeared and there was nothing to show for it, and she was alone... it did not bear thinking about. They would have to push on. There would be no other way out.

And then Madi came back from the dead, and Silver felt all the questions melt away the moment Madi was in her arms again. She had done terrible, reckless things to get to this point, and she was not willing to let anything force her to do them again. Her plan would move forward. There would be no war.

XX

“What happens after all of this?” Silver asked, and Flint frowned at her from across the cabin.

“What happens after all of it? Assume your plan succeeds and we retrieve Madi alive. Assume your war begins and spreads throughout the New World. I saw what came of Nassau when it was touched by it. There was nothing in Nassau but horror.”

Flint was still, waiting for Silver’s thoughts to spin themselves out. 

“You said it was just a transition,” Silver continued, her voice even and deep, though Flint could see the emotion she held carefully in check. “That something better lay beyond it, something meaningful.” She looked up at Flint. “But what if that isn’t so? What if the result of this war isn’t beyond the horror – what if it is the horror itself?”

Silver’s voice quirked in a way that unnerved Flint. She was not accustomed to thinking of what they were accomplishing here as horror. At worst, it was merely an outward reflection of her own internal state. At best, it was the birth of something greater: violent, yes, and bloody, but yielding new life and a world that might finally be built the way it ought to be.

Flint stepped closer to Silver, weighing her words. She leaned against the wall. “If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England, and make room for something else,” she began, “there most certainly lies a dark moment between here and there. A moment of terror where everything appears to be without hope. I know this.” She looked at Silver, whose eyes were black and liquid in the dim cabin. Flint breathed, letting herself speak the words into the dark, waiting silence: “But I cannot believe that that is all there is. I cannot believe we are so poorly made as that. Incapable of surviving in the state in which we were born. Grown so used to the yoke that there can be no progress without it.”

It was all she had, and it was true. 

Silver smiled. “It’s a lot to ask,” she said, her words a little less tightly controlled, “to wager so much suffering on blind faith.”

That surprised her. “It isn’t entirely faith,” Flint said. “The right people will hold the world together while it finds its balance.”

“You think so much of what you and I can accomplish together?”

“You and her,” Flint said, abruptly needing Silver to understand how certain she was about where they were going, to understand that Flint would never overestimate her own place in the world she wanted so badly to give to Silver. “You and Madi. She’s as wise as her father, as strong as her mother. There isn’t a man or woman in Nassau who wouldn’t argue that she is the best of them all.”

“And you think I’m the one best suited to lead our people through this?” Silver asked, and for a flicker of a moment Flint saw Silver as she had been: the scrawny cocksure would-be cook where now there was a woman so powerful she seemed to generate her own gravitational pull.

“I think that you are the best of us,” Flint told her. “The two of you together are the world in balance.”

XXI

~A few weeks ago~

It was a hot day, and the walk up the hill took longer than she had anticipated. At the top, she found an assortment of items she had not expected: two swords, upright in the sand, and a crutch leaning on a rock. And her captain, hands behind her back, facing the sea.

“What are we looking at?” 

“Nassau. Thereabouts. A few days over the horizon, just waiting for us. Can’t you see it?”

Silver didn’t even try to see it. “After I just climbed that fucking hill, are you being serious right now?”

She was rewarded with the low sound of laughter, but Flint continued to stare at the sea.  
“With a little luck, in a few weeks’ time, I will lead a battle that will end with us taking Nassau and beginning a revolution.” Finally, she turned to look at Silver. “I cannot do it without you.”

After all this time and everything that had happened between them, hearing Flint speak that way still pulled the breath from Silver’s lungs. “You want to teach me to fight?”

“I know you know how to fight,” Flint said, walking almost casually to the swords in the sand. “I want to teach you how to fight and not die.” The words were clipped and nearly humorous, but Silver could hear the concern that underlay them. 

“You’ll have more control with that,” Flint gestured to the crutch. “I know how you feel about being seen without the leg –”

But Silver was already rolling up the hem of her trousers to get at the unwieldy set of buckles keeping her leg in place. “The men… I have to manage how they see me. But for pride to be an issue between you and I,” she dropped the leg to the ground and took up the crutch. “Well, I think we’re plain past that by now, don’t you?”

The look that passed between them pulled tight as vihuela strings.

“You really imagine a few weeks of this is going to make that much of a difference?” Silver asked, taking the sword that Flint held out to her. “Am I not what I am at this point?”

Flint looked at her curiously then, as though searching for something. “It’s better than nothing,” she said.

Fighting Flint was impossible. Maneuvering the crutch required a type of coordination that she hadn’t taken to in the weeks after her injury. Doing it while also swinging a sword, with the incessant sun in her eyes, was maddening. Time after time Flint’s sword tapped her shoulders, finding her weaknesses. At the end of an hour she was drenched in sweat and unable to continue, frustrated at her own lack of ability.

“Same time tomorrow,” Flint said.

//

The second day, things were different, the sun not so vicious. Silver was no better at fighting, certainly. But she was getting better at failing. Her obvious ineptitude didn’t make her feel so angry with herself. The pain of the crutch under her arm, taking half of her weight, began to ground rather than distract her. Flint’s sword against the side of her neck began to take on an almost anticipatory quality, a sense both of benediction and of being overcome by something larger than herself. That it was Flint fighting her was part of the appeal, of course. But it was the act of losing the fight in itself, of losing but not dying, that she felt as a kind of wonderful ache low in her stomach.

When she met her captain’s eyes between the glints of metal, she sometimes got a flash of an idea of where Flint would attack from next. It was not nearly enough to stop her – it wasn’t even enough to shift her stance. But those clear flashes of understanding held some power for her. She wanted more. 

All of it together, the physical exertion, the mental clarity, and that paradoxical pleasure when Flint won a round, it didn’t feel like fighting. It felt like fucking. Not the careful, reverent night by the fire, or the first fumblings in Flint’s cabin. It felt like something wilder. When next Flint’s sword touched her shoulder, she let her own arm fall in surrender. Standing in the sand, she looked at Flint levelly. Flint did not move for a long moment. And then, very slowly, she brought her sword down the line of Silver’s arm. Silver shivered, waited, letting the tension bloom between them until it became unbearable. 

“Captain,” she said, and stepped forward.

//

It was like that for several weeks. Almost every day, they would meet atop the hill far from the camp and fight. Silver even began to show some improvement. More often than not, their lessons would be cut short and they would push each other down against the sand and grass. They both seemed to want the same thing: to be torn apart, burned up, cracked open at the heart. 

“Two questions are of paramount importance,” Flint said, her stance shifting to echo her Navy training. “Who was my opponent yesterday, and who is he today? Answer those two questions and there is very little he can… hide from you.” Something strange had entered Flint’s expression. Silver felt her stomach twist uncomfortably.

“What?” She asked, feeling herself walk, against her will, off a cliff into whatever conversation Flint wanted to have.

“Who you were,” Flint said slowly. “I have no idea who you were. Not before we found you, at any rate.”

Silver’s pulse was flying. She hadn’t been prepared for this. The fighting had brought down her guard. “Jesus Christ, don’t do that,” she said. “If you want to know where I come from, just ask.”

Flint looked at her with a heaviness in her gaze that Silver very much did not like to see. “I think I just did.”

She rattled off the story she had told so many times, about an unremarkable but sad childhood in Whitechapel –

“Except it isn’t true,” Flint said. “I remember when you first told me, it sounded like an invention. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I suppose I assumed I’d learn the truth of it eventually. But now I’m realizing that never happened. And what is of some concern to me is that you’ve just told me that story again. Why is that?”

The future and the past flickered at the edges of her vision, nauseatingly close. She hesitated, wondering if she could possibly muster the strength to voice it all here, now, before her captain. But she had already made that choice, long ago: no past, no future, just motion away and motion toward. 

“It isn’t important,” she said quietly.

Flint looked at her, and Silver used all of her strength to meet her uncomprehending gaze.

“You know that isn’t true,” Flint said. “You know my story. Thomas, Miranda, all of it. It has made me transparent to you. Not only that, but you insinuated yourself into that story such that were you and I ever to come to blows, I’d be forced to hesitate before doing you any harm.”

“Slow down,” Silver said, trying to keep the pleading from her voice, “I –”

“I’m not angry with you.” Flint’s voice was gentle, like she was trying so hard to understand. “It’s just, you know my story. And for some reason I cannot figure –”

“I don’t want you to know mine,” Silver said.

//

The silence between them lasted a whole day, but Silver still met her on the hilltop the next afternoon. Flint was surprised; Silver was so flighty, and she could tell she had struck a nerve. She had been turning it over in her mind, and she still could not fathom what was so private that it could not be shared, now, after all they had been through. They began their fight, but Silver’s movements were distracted.

“You’re still leaning forward,” Flint told her. “Let’s go again.”

But Silver was still, staring at the ground as though steeling herself. Flint waited, willing herself to be patient until Silver was ready to tell her the truth.

“I have no story to tell,” Silver said at last. “It might seem that I am trying to conceal something from you, but truth is, there is no story to tell.”

“No one’s past is that unremarkable,” Flint said, trying not to sound angry.

“Not unremarkable, just… without relevance.” 

Flint held her tongue, though such a statement was clearly absurd. Without relevance? How could the moments that made up Silver’s life be without relevance to her?

“A long time ago I absolved myself from the obligation of finding any. No need to account for all my life’s events in the context of a story that somehow… defines me. Events, some of which, no one could derive any meaning from, other than that the world is a place of unending horrors.” She looked up at Flint, then, eyes poorly concealing an almost childlike desperation. “You know of me all I can bear to be known. All that is relevant to be known. Can that be enough and there still be trust between us?”

There was a moment, then, absolutely unmistakeable to both of them, that passed without words. On Flint’s face, despite her best efforts, she knew that Silver could read her answer as plain as day: No.

When they both looked back, years later, on what happened to them, it was that moment that both of them returned to. It was the moment when everything began to shatter.

XXII

Flint walked through the woods and tried, really tried, to ignore the growing pit in her stomach. She tried to keep believing that there was a way out, that there was still a war. She tried to see it in front of her, to force it into existence. She tried and tried until the hot spike of understanding grew too painful to bear.

“We’ll rest up here,” she said.

//

“This is what it would be,” Silver said, wishing Flint could understand but knowing she never would. “Time after time after time. Endlessly.” She could see Flint’s war, the unending torrent of blood, the life that was only misery until it was finally nothing, forever. And she could see the way out – tenuous, uncertain, unrealized, maybe inaccessible to Silver forever. But there was a way out for Flint, and for Madi, and they were the only two people left in this whole putrefying world that meant anything at all.

//

“In the dark, there is discovery. There is possibility. There is freedom in the dark, once someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close to doing it as we are right now?” Everything, every second of the last ten years would mean nothing if she could not convince Silver in this one moment. Miranda’s death, Thomas’s death, the lives lost and the endless destruction, it would be nothing if she could not pull Silver back to her. She put every last resource she had into her words, because without this, there was no future at all – there was just nothing.

//

“All this will be for nothing,” Flint said, though the words rasped in her throat. “We will have been for nothing.” She saw a flicker of grief in Silver’s eyes at that, but it wasn’t enough to change her mind. “Defined by their histories. Distorted to fit into their narrative, until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will.”

Silver listened to Flint tell her that Madi would one day leave her, or else not be enough for her; that she was throwing away the only chance she would ever have of mattering. And she felt it. The words sunk deep into her chest and stayed, and she knew they would live there forever. They were true. She knew it in the darkest part of her soul: she would never matter again. She would never again stand before Flint at the edge of the world. The odds that Madi would even look at her after this were vanishingly slim. She knew it all and it hurt more than anything else she had ever had to do. 

But if her time with Flint had taught her one thing, it was that there were lives she valued more than her own. There were people she would give absolutely anything to protect, even if it meant losing them and their love. She had thought about it, considered her options carefully, and chosen the path that would metaphorically plunge a knife into her own beating heart, twist it, and leave it there.

//

Silver stood with her arm outstretched, pointing her pistol at Flint’s chest, for what felt like lifetimes. Flint just stared at her, heartbroken, utterly despairing. Tears blurred Silver’s eyes and she blinked them away; no matter what the outcome, she would soon reach the moment where she would never look at Flint again, and she could not bear to waste even this most terrible time. 

And then, suddenly, something in Flint just crumbled. The energy, the fight that she had been holding onto for so long just bled out of her. Her shoulders dropped, her knees buckled slightly, and she stumbled back against the boulder behind her. She broke Silver’s gaze and put a hand to her eyes. And then she made a terrible sound: a sob, or a laugh, or a scream. It startled the birds roosting above them and Silver, realizing Flint was actually on the point of giving in, felt twinned grief and relief flood her body. Her men were already approaching, tying Flint’s hands and keeping an eye on her in case she should try to attack. But Silver knew that there would be no more fighting today. There would be a long, terrible walk to the ship, and then she had one final job to do.

XXIII

Flint awoke after her first night in the brig. Silver was taking her somewhere, but had so far been vague on the details. She didn’t care. Ostensibly she was a prisoner here, though Silver was taking great pains to ensure that she was comfortable. She wished it were otherwise; the comfort felt wrong. She had given up the war, and for that she deserved to suffer. She had fallen asleep muttering a litany of desperate apologies to Miranda and Thomas, over and over again until exhaustion had finally overwhelmed her. No apology could ever be enough.

She dimly registered the unmistakable sound of Silver descending the stairs. Flint was still lying on her cot and staring at nothing. She had nothing to say to her former quartermaster, but she couldn’t even summon the energy to be properly angry. 

“I need to tell you something important,” Silver said, taking a seat on the other side of the bars. Flint did not respond.

“I know that this is going to be difficult for you to understand,” she continued, and Flint wondered vaguely what Silver could possibly have left to say. That she was taking Flint to be executed? That the price of the end of the war was her head? That she had been a British spy this entire time? The possibilities flitted idly through her mind, some of them almost amusing. None of them could have prepared her for what Silver actually told her.

“This ship is on a course to Savannah, in the new Georgia colony. In Savannah, there is… an institution. A farming community run by a man named Oglethorpe. He is a prison reformist who believes that those convicted of crimes ought to have a second chance – a chance to live in relative freedom and without undue punishment, away from society. It is –”

“Slavery?” Flint finished for her, turning her head fractionally in Silver’s direction. “You’re bringing me to a plantation for people that England deems criminals, run by a man whose intent is to exploit their labour while feeling that he has done a wonderful service to King and Country? Is that how you envision justice being done?”

“No,” Silver said gently. “Not quite. I am taking you to Oglethorpe’s plantation, you are correct. And you will live there, and you will not be free to leave, and for that I am sorry. But I could not think of any other way to make sure that you would be safe.”

Flint stared directly at Silver now, unable and unwilling to hide her disgust. “Safe,” she repeated.

“I’ve told you the bad news,” Silver pressed on. “But there is a reason I chose this particular community.”

“Other than the fact that he supposedly treats his prisoners more humanely than one might expect?” Flint spat.

“I chose it because Thomas Hamilton lives there.”

The silence that stretched out after Silver spoke was pregnant, but in a way that suggested it might be about to birth monsters. When Flint finally spoke, the acid in her voice could have melted straight through the bars. 

“Do not ever,” she began, standing up and stepping forward, “say her name again. And do not, under any circumstances, repeat the lie that you just told me. If you do, I promise you, I will kill you for it.”

Silver stood as well and looked at Flint levelly. She had been ready for this, more or less. “On that island, I did just what you said I was doing,” she said. “I threw away the only chance I had to matter. I destroyed my relationship with you and in all likelihood with Madi as well. My reasons may not make sense to you, but I made my choice because – I love you –” this was difficult, “and because I am willing to trade my happiness for yours.” Flint looked thoroughly unmoved by this declaration, but Silver continued, “do you really think that I would lie to you? About this of all things? I told you this would be difficult for you to understand. I knew you wouldn’t believe me at first. But she’s alive. She’s alive, she’s in Savannah, and in a few days, you will be there with her.”

These last few sentences, Silver had said over Flint’s violent objections, but she knew she had been heard.

“You will have questions,” she said when Flint slowed and stood, shaking, refusing to face Silver. “I have only a few of the answers. I will come back later and answer them for you, if I can.” 

She left, then, and made her way back up the stairs.

XXIV

And there, under the bright Georgia sunlight, a figure toiled. James had not ever allowed herself to believe it, had kept the possibility from touching her heart, or tried to. But Thomas fit into the fabric of the world as nobody else ever could, and her doubts turned to chaff in the wind as the manacles fell away. She felt her heart beat so hard that she could not trust her legs. The figure turned on some silent instinct to look, and there she was. Her face, her face, her eyes, and James stepped forward, pulled irresistibly to the new centre of her universe. All she could parse were fractured visions of Thomas as the rest of the world blurred into spun gold. She saw Thomas drop what she had been holding, saw her hands, her eyes, her hair short and sun-bleached. She could not take a breath, she walked interminably, she stared at Thomas and stepped across the yielding, silent earth. Aeons later, she stopped, two paces from Thomas’s searching eyes. Did James look so different? Would Thomas see her across all the years? For a final, horrible moment, she wondered if Thomas would recognize her at all.

And then understanding broke across Thomas’s face like crashing surf, and in a miracle beyond anything James had yet seen, she smiled and reached forward, pulling James at last, at last, at last into her arms. James gasped out a breath between the sobs that were starting to shake her and put a hand to Thomas’s hair. She was here, and whole, and safe, and James swore that she would never again let Thomas out of her sight or the circle of her arms. In every nerve of her body, a tumult of ricocheting emotions threatened to shake her apart. She breathed, and under the sweat and soil she could smell her, this was Thomas, no vision could ever have been so true. She splayed her fingers across Thomas’s back, trying to hold as much of her as she could. She couldn’t see anymore, could barely stand, her whole body full of love.

But Thomas’s arms were sure, and they did not tremble, as though she had been ready every day for the last ten years to reach out and hold James at a moment’s notice. As though, despite everything she must have seen, all the hurt they must have caused her (James’s stomach clenched and she squeezed Thomas tighter), she could still reach out toward love without fear. James heard it then, the tiny sound that unstitched her entirely: Thomas laughed. Her face pressed into the crook of James’s neck, she laughed the sweetest laugh, as though she could not believe what was happening but was nonetheless delighted by it beyond measure. 

Thomas put her hands on James’s face then, her fingers curling against cropped hair, and James did the same, lifting a gentle hand to Thomas’s cheek as she had so often longed to do. She leant their foreheads together, and she could feel the tremor of Thomas’s breath, the care with which Thomas touched her, as though she were infinitely fragile. James tilted her head up gently, silently asking the most extraordinary question she had asked since they had parted, and Thomas answered her. They kissed like a bolt sliding home, like a long fall into deep water, like the ringing of gold in sunlight. Ten years melted away like honey on the tip of James’s tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally finished this! It's not even that long I'm just spectacularly busy all the time! Thank you so much to everyone who reads this, I appreciate you more than I can say.


End file.
